


Blood

by DeepSeaViolet



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: :))))))), Gen, Good Writing More Like Depression eggs de, Have fun reading it, I'm a broken woman, it killed me to write this so, ur welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 15:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12707586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeepSeaViolet/pseuds/DeepSeaViolet
Summary: "In the end, nothing had mattered. He knew that this city, this gym, this decrepit seat, and this title were in his blood, bound to him by the folds of his heart."





	Blood

Silver wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing. Viridian Forest was just as eerie and calm as he remembered, and the October clouds doused the foliage in a solemn gray-yellow. He should have been back in Johto by now, at least he thought so, he couldn’t remember the date Clair had given him. Originally, he was just supposed to check that things were running smoothly at Indigo Plateau. Lance hadn’t been seen since Gold dethroned him, and despite all of her aggressiveness and rancor Clair cared about her cousin. It was a shame that Gold hadn’t been more genuine with Clair when he first met her in Blackthorn, because then she would trust his word over the pokegear and Silver wouldn’t be back here again.

 

Silver shifted his back against the mossy trunk he had himself propped up on, but he wasn’t any more comfortable than before. Of course, when he arrived, Lance was lounging in the champion’s hall with Gold as if nothing had happened. Well, that was a lie, Lance was much different than he was before Gold came along. The vein on his forehead had stopped sticking out, his stiff attire was done away with, and his voice was much quieter. He and Gold were “planning” renovations for the champion’s hall, which really meant sitting around throwing out ideas, and battling the occasional challenger who came through. The only idea that the two had seriously considered was a dungeon theme complete with “real equipment,” something Gold had mentioned with a smirk in Lance’s direction. Lance had covered his face in his hands and Silver had decided that he had to leave before he learned more than he wanted to know. The rest of the Elite Four were taking the good with the bad, without a doubt glad to see Lance with regular blood pressure levels, but annoyed to have Gold “helping” him with his stress. Silver decided that everything was fine, and that Gold would probably hand off the title to someone else within three months because Arceus knows that kid wasn’t going to stay anywhere if he could be going somewhere else. 

 

Perhaps Silver was wrestling with the thought of who Gold would pass the title to, and maybe it was compounded by the fact that Green and Red had eloped to Alola and a new Viridian gym leader was needed. It was probably just that Silver didn’t want to explain to Clair that all was well at the Indigo Plateau and in turn have his lies called out, and then have to explain in unfortunate detail what was actually going on between Gold and Lance. Either way, he couldn’t make himself leave Viridian. He didn’t even know why he came here in the first place, it was hardly on the way to Blackthorn. Maybe he just needed some time to think about everything. He got up with an unfortunate creak in his knees, cursing the rowdy Kanto winds for making him hold on to Honchkrow so tight, and set off in the general direction that he had come from.

 

The city was also just as he remembered. Cold, damp, and lifeless - gray structures too shameful to be called buildings melded into the equally gray concrete below. Silver didn’t know why he was still walking forward. He could turn and there was the cafe where he first met Professor Oak, or there was the alley where he would hide from Ariana when he escaped from under her wing. He walked as if pulled by a red string, uneasy and moments away from breaking, yet being drawn in the same direction nonetheless. The gridlocked intersections continued to pass by. Anger flashed as Silver demanded of himself a reason to keep going, a reason to be wasting so much time. His feet didn’t stop, soaking now in the red sneakers he had worn for at least an eternity. He was nearing the border of the city and the suburbs, and the ground was beginning to slope uphill. The breeze brought the tangy, salty smell of the Viridian outskirts, and Silver stiffened.

 

In a way, it was a dissociative moment. He saw the red roof and gray curved walls, but nothing registered in his head. The doors waited for him to approach, the wet grass silent under his steps. He entered anticlimactically, stopping to wonder if he had even used a key or if he should be at all surprised that the doors opened for him. He turned left and flipped a few switches, and fluorescent lights struggled into a dim glow. Silver prepared to navigate the conveyer belt puzzle, and belatedly realized that it wasn’t activated. He didn’t want to think about why he had it memorized. Time, Silver decided in that moment, was flawed. So much dust had collected on the ground that in the dim lighting the gym almost looked the same as it was when Silver was just a little kid. It was almost as if the gray and disrepair were the gym’s natural state and that it would find its way back to that image Silver had from ten years ago given enough time. What didn’t make sense was that Green and Red had only left a week ago...right? Silver checked his pokegear and took note of the date. If three months feels like three weeks, then time must be flawed. He didn’t mind the fact that everyone in his family was always late for everything, or that he couldn’t remember doing anything outside of training these past months.

 

His footsteps echoed in the empty room with sickening cliché loneliness that Silver had seen in every action movie, every dramatic TV show, and every video game. It reminded him of the hallway to his father’s office, which was built acoustically to make every sound made reverberate so cleanly that everyone would hear if you dropped an earring, or a single lonely footstep. It wasn’t all that symbolic, it was just a business tactic - intimidate the client before they even enter the room. Silver looked down at the chair (throne?) that Green would lounge on, watching challenger after challenger be fooled by his puzzle, and before him Giovanni would sit bolt upright and sneer at whoever came his way. Green had repainted it, but Silver could feel that it was the very same chair that he had sat on as a seven year old, and he wondered why Green would bother keeping it. Knowing Green, it had most likely been a surface-level decision, probably just that the league wouldn’t pay for a new one and he already had the black paint anyway. Still, Silver couldn’t help but wonder how Green could stand to keep an heirloom to the man that he and Red had dismantled systematically - town by town, hideout by hideout, battle by battle - in his everyday workplace. Silver decided that Green just wasn’t that sentimental of a person, and digressed.

 

The doorway at the back stole Silver’s attention away from the chair, and he walked over to it, hands in pockets. He didn’t want to think about why his hands automatically found the switch, or how everything sat exactly where it was supposed to. He went to the badges and picked one up. Feathers, flight. Silver shivered and knew that the estranged gym leader had groomed him for it. The badge hit the floor with a clatter, and Silver returned to the gym. This time, there was no observing or sweeping motions of his eyes. There were no more ties pulling him forward. His feet moved when he told them to, where he told them to, and they stopped before an old black chair. Silver turned around and fell.

 

There was a moment, suspended in gravity, where Silver knew. His imagination ran rampant with a world where Green had never accepted the title, and still he knew. In the end, nothing had mattered. He knew that this city, this gym, this decrepit seat, and this title were in his blood, bound to him by the folds of his heart. And, once broken, he knew that no matter how much he tried to distance himself from his father he was made for this. Deep in his bloodflow, he knew that there was only one escape. 

 

Silver adjusted himself so that he was sitting as if nailed to the chair like his father would. A deep breath sounded in the empty hall and he consulted himself. He was not ready to escape yet. He knew what this meant, and he accepted a red calendar.

 

The next week, the first challenger came.

**Author's Note:**

> 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100011 01101000


End file.
